Crazy from the heat

I’m doing math homework and thinking about Godel’s Incompleteness theorem. If you take his theorem and apply it outside of math it provokes some funny ideas. To review he says that for any system part of it will be true but it can’t be formally proven to be true. So you’ll intuitively know it is true but you can’t prove it.

Now think about paranoid schizophrenics. Their brains must be operating in a hyper rational mode. They create elaborate constructs of rational truth. The problem comes when they can’t intuitively accept a truth and their brain gets stuck in recursive mode. Take the Liar’s Paradox, “This sentence is false.” It’s true, but it’s false. You and I can intuitively accept it as true even though we can’t formally prove it. I think you could say the paranoiac runs down that rabbit hole trying to find a rational proof.

Now think about our ability to intuitively grasp truth without being able to formally prove it. This is a pretty amazing ability.